Acclaimed director Ang Lee talks about his latest film, Life of Pi

Film director Ang Lee discusses belief and God in his latest work, Life of Pi.

Transcript

CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: Life of Pi is a Booker Prize-winning novel that struggled to find a publisher. Then it was the movie that couldn't be made. All because it's the story of a boy's journey adrift on a lifeboat with a tiger. The challenge of making the movie was picked up by one of the world's great directors, Ang Lee, and he added another high hurdle: making the movie in 3D. I spoke to Ang Lee earlier today.

Ang Lee, welcome to 7.30.

ANG LEE, DIRECTOR: My great pleasure to be here.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Now you came late to this career. You were a house husband for quite some time. You got down to having $23 in your bank account. You were a disappointment to your highly successful father. Do you ever pinch yourself and wonder at your success now?

ANG LEE: I do believe in fate. Back then when I didn't have a movie to make, I believe in fate. This must mean something. And when I make the movie now, I still feel that way. It's just sort of - it's my life.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Did you ever lose faith that you might get there?

ANG LEE: From time to time, those six years when I was struggling. But I didn't really lose faith 'cause evidently there's nothing else I did well. (Laughs) It must be.

CHRIS UHLMANN: How do you choose your stories? Because you have a very eclectic palette. At first people were talking about you as being Taiwan's Woody Allen and then you move on to things like The Hulk and now The Life of Pi. What draws you to a story?

ANG LEE: Well for my first few movies, I wrote them myself. So I only wrote family drama 'cause that's all I know. I stay home. But after three or four of them, after Sense and Sensibility, I really made an effort, tried to be different. I was afraid I will be pigeonholed. I have a great fear of that. And after (inaudible) I think basically curiosity. I'm an avid filmmaker. I'm curious about how do you make this movie? How do you make that kind of genre? Working with different type of people, reach out different parts of the audience heart.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Why did you decide that you wanted to make this movie?

ANG LEE: Well because it's so impossible, it becomes very challenging. And also the theme really attracts me 'cause it examines storytelling, the power of storytelling and the power of illusion - that's what I do. How do you make a movie inside of that illusion examining it? That's a great challenge. And also, all the difficulties: philosophy, ocean, digital tiger, real tiger.

It just hit me one day when I was deciding whether to do it or not, if I add another dimension, maybe the unsolvable becomes solvable, maybe things will open up and I thought of 3D. And I thought that may be a new cinematic language worth exploring. So I got excited. Once you get excited, there's a desire to do it.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Was that too because there's a long time spent on a raft and you needed something that was really visually appealing to enable the movie to keep progressing?

ANG LEE: Yeah. 3D and water. Water and 3D, I think as a character that was never portrayed before. I think it's a visualisation of emotion, of mental movement. I think it reflected the character's mentality.

3D, it's a new way of bringing the audience immersed into the picture they're watching, they're more inside of it.

CHRIS UHLMANN: One of the things that I find that's striking about movie, it is vast, it's your largest movie, it's the one that you've spent the most money on, but in some ways it's a very small movie. It's a relationship between a boy and this tiger and really a boy and himself which harks back to your first movies which are all about family relationships.

ANG LEE: Yeah. And personal relationship with your own self that's keep changing while you're growing. The loss of innocence - how do you keep a balance between growth and innocence? How do you deal with the inner violence, the survival instinct? It's not only a close relationship with a tiger, with the adversary, with your only relationship, but only with yourself; how do you carry yourself? How do you keep your sanity? Yeah, that's - to me it's a tight drama. (Inaudible) a tiger. On the other hand, there's a lot of loneliness. He has to have self-conversation, self-dialogue. I think it's wonderful material to explore.

CHRIS UHLMANN: And the extraordinary thing in the way that you do it too is that - the violence - the tiger's in the boy.

ANG LEE: Absolutely. By the way that's kind of Asian sentiment. Asian, very quickly people see that's a long journey how he deal with themselves and the tiger is a symbol of that.

CHRIS UHLMANN: It's an ancient theme though, it's you only deal with life by knowing yourself.

ANG LEE: In some ways we can be very lonely in life, yeah. Relations something you can bounce off each other, but at the end of the day you have to deal with the lonely self. That's the most essence of life I think.

CHRIS UHLMANN: And really is that the theme that binds all your movies in some way or another.

ANG LEE: I think so. I think in my movies, in my life, my characters and me, we always try to find something to believe in. I think that's the kind of essence of my movies and my struggle in life. But the essence of life's everything that change around you, the way of God and nothing stand still. We always trying to catch up. We always learn, find ourselves learning. There's nothing that's absolutely stand still you can believe and hang onto. There's no such thing. Life is a drift.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Well, Ang Lee, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us.

ANG LEE: Thank you.

CHRIS UHLMANN: And I am neither Margaret nor David, but four stars from me.